Ocean-loving composer Warshauer to perform recent work

Tuesday

Oct 22, 2013 at 8:50 AM

When Meira Warshauer was growing up in Wilmington, she loved the summers at Wrightsville Beach.

By Ben SteelmanBen.Steelman@StarNewsOnline.com

When Meira Warshauer was growing up in Wilmington, she loved the seemingly endless summers at Wrightsville Beach."There was such freedom, such joy," she said. "When I get in the ocean, no matter what time of year, I'm never sorry I went."Warshauer is now an internationally known composer whose works have been performed on National Public Radio and on American Public Media's "Performance Today" series. She still loves the ocean, though, and worries about its long-term environmental health.Those twin concerns helped inspire her recent duo-piano work, "Ocean Calling," which is getting a performance Thursday, Oct. 24, in Beckwith Recital Hall at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, with pianists Norman Bemelmans and Elizabeth Loparits at the keyboards.Well, not always at the keyboards. Warshauer's score calls for one of the pianos to have its strings plucked, bowed with horsehair or sounded by the side of a sliding shot glass. "That in particular makes a wonderful seagull noise," said Bemelmans, who's also UNCW director of cultural arts.A long work, "Ocean Calling" comes in three separate pieces. Only two of these will be played Thursday; Bemelmans and Loparits will play the complete composition in February 2014 as part of UNCW's New Music Festival.The first piece, "Waves and Currents," is supposed to reflect the "sheer joy of swimming in the ocean," Warshauer said. Rhythms change rapidly as the two pianos interplay."I'm a pianist but I had never written for two pianos before," Warshauer said. "It's very liberating. It allowed me to take an orchestral approach to the music."That orchestral approach is apparent in the second piece, "From the Depths." This slower-paced section tries to evoke the ethereal, mysterious quality of the deep ocean, she added, as well as the delicacy of its creatures.Bemelmans praised the lyricism of "Ocean Calling" and described it as an exciting challenge for a performer. "It's very energetic, very atmospheric," he said. "It really does recreate the feel of being by the ocean."Accompanying the performance will be a video of ocean scenes compiled by Warshauer's daughter, Chana Levine, a photographer.Thursday's performance of "Ocean Calling" will be a benefit, with proceeds going to support a new piano scholarship at UNCW in memory of the legendary Wilmington piano teacher Mary Eunice Troy. Warshauer studied with Troy from the age of 7 until she left for Harvard.The daughter of Samuel and Miriam Warshauer, the composer grew up in a musical home. Her mother played the violin for years with the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra, which she helped to found.Her compositions have often involved Jewish themes, but increasingly her music has taken up environmental concerns. Her First Symphony, jointly commissioned by the Dayton Philharmonic, the South Carolina Philharmonic and the Western Piedmont Symphony, is titled "Living, Breathing Earth," and has twice been broadcast by NPR.Meanwhile, Warshauer and her husband recently bought a second home at Wrightsville Beach, which is currently being renovated."Forget San Francisco," she said. "I left my heart at Wrightsville Beach."